> after 10 years or so of trying, you'd expect the results to be far better

Would you? Most search engines' growth, including Google, was fueled by advertising revenue. Obviously that part of the equation isn't really an option for DDG.

I wonder if they would be better off as a non-profit, like Wikipedia. I would donate to them.

At its peak, Yahoo!'s results were quantifibly better than Google's for over a year, but no one noticed/cared.

Google search has been "good enough" for years, and so has the competition.

Multiple companies have burnt billions proving that search relevance will not convert users on its own.

If you want to crush Google, you need some compelling reason for people to switch (voice? privacy?), or you need to maintain good relevance until Google screws up badly enough. Maybe they will fire half the search team during an economic downturn in the 2020's, for example. At that point, you can use cash reserves to poach most of the top 10% of the remaining team.

The problem with long games like this is that you might screw up or lose focus before Google does. This happened at Yahoo.

Switching industry sectors, Microsoft had tons of negative press about 8, 8.1 and then 10's force upgrade/privacy debacle. With a mediocre or better hardware launch, Apple probably would have cleaned up. Instead, Apple's MacOS lines happened to falter in the same years as Windows did. Now, Windows devices are earning lukewarm to positive comparisons against Apple devices.